THE COME UP: Mateo – “Don’t Shoot Me Down” feat. Goapele & Ab-Liva

Singer-songwriter/pianist Mateo has released his first mixtape, Love and Stadiums, under Krucial Noise, the label of Grammy Award-winning producer and musical partner of Alicia Keys, Kerry “Krucial” Brothers. The self-desrcirbed “Alternative R&B” artist and Morehouse alum personified the meaning of “living on a dollar and a dream” when he left his job as a consultant to join his friend/producer Jae Staxx, who was heading to Los Angeles to work on the sitcom EVE. You know how the story goes from there…The rest is history.

Inspired by the likes of Lauryn Hill and Donny Hathaway, Mateo states in an interview with Singesroom:

“R&B music used to be about feel, it was like heart music, it touched your soul in a certain way. When a song came out it was emotional. [Now] when purely singing over hip-hop beats you can’t really get that emotion out. It’s more about the head boppin’ and the club music and all that kind of stuff. What I’m trying to do is, I want to still include hip-hop stuff in my music but it is also about bringing back some of the sincerity and the love music that used to happen before. Go back to the time when certain songs came out and you remember where you were and what you were going through.”

Mateo’s first single, “Don’t Shoot Me Down,” a cover from Lil Wayne’s, The Carter III, album, features Goapele and Ab-Liva. Watch the music video below.